Page 63 of Shameless in Vegas

“Ask your sister and your mother if anyonebeat the hell out of mewhile we were out, Joaquin,” she hisses. “Ask yourself if anyone in this house laid a finger on me while you were with meall day.” She wraps the towel around her torso, hiding the injuries that could notpossiblybe the result of anything but someone repeatedly bludgeoning her. “I tripped over a rack of dresses on my way to the fitting room and it fell on top of me.Thatis what happened.”

“Ohyeah?” I cock my head to one side and point at her. “Then why the fuck didn’t my sister or my mother tell me about this alleged,” I curl my fingers in air quotes, “fall, Natalia?”

“I did not want to ruin the day by worrying them,” she snaps without missing a beat, and if she thinks I’m stupid enough to believe that shit, she is fuckingcrazy.

“You’re so full of shit.” I take a long stride to stand in front of her. “What isreallygoing on? Why the fuck are you lying to me about something like this?” I wave my hands wildly at her covered body. “That shit looks like you need to be treated for internal fucking injuries!”

She forcefully juts her chin up at my face. “Why the fuck do you evencare? You are only in this marriage out of a sense of duty and to prove to your parents that it wasn’t just a drunken mistake.”

I scoff even though it’s actually… you know… kind of true. “I amnot. I found myself in this situation, and Ichoseto stay with you, and I—”

“Exactly.” She flips her wrist at me. “Out of a sense ofduty.”

I’m going blind with rage, I’m losing control, and I’m about to word vomit about all the shit she’s been hiding from me, and Ican’tdo that yet. There’s no way she’ll calmly sit down to talk with Papá about everything if I confront her about it while we’re both totally fucking amped like this. But I can’t fuckingthink, and the only thing Icanthink of expels from my mouth on pure impulse.

“Iloveyou, Natalia.” I grab her shoulders again. “Thatis why I’m married to younow.”

“You are the one who is full of shit,” she all but spits in my face. “You are forcing yourself to love me out of a sense of duty. It’s notreallove. We don’treallylove each other. And you arelyingto yourselfandme right now.”

“You don’t fucking know.” My hands move from her shoulders, to her neck, to her cheeks on their own accord, and the nagging ache of dismay and disappointment in my chest is panging so violently that it’s making its way to my throat. “You don’t know. You just have no fuckingclue.”

“Aboutwhat?” she snaps.

Abouta lot, actually. And until this very moment, I don’t think I had any fucking clue either. Now that I’ve seen the evidence of somethingawfulhaving been inflicted upon her, the ache of disappointment I felt on the day I realized this whole marriage was a ruse is overwhelming me with the fact that Idolove her.I amcrazedand madly in love with her, and it only just now dawns on me that maybe time won’t heal me of this.

I’m going to love Natalia for the rest of my life.

Even after I’ve turned her in to my father and she’s rotting away in a jail cell for the rest ofherlife.

I could fuckingcry.

I also want to fuckingmurdersomeone myself, because I swear to God someone did this to her. There’s no fucking way it’s just from a fall. It honestly looks like Xavier somehow paid her a fucking visit without anyone even suspecting it. And the idea of that unleashes a primal, territorialrageinside of me that I haven’t felt since the day I killed all thosemafiososright here in my own fucking house. Only this version of that rage feels about a thousand times more violent because Natalia is fuckingmine.

No matter how I got into this situation, this woman is my fuckingwife, and some piece of shit fucking pounded on her.

So now I not only have to deal with the fact that I’m going to love her for the rest of my life, butalsomanage to somehow uproot this new feeling of completely carnalpossession.

When the chips fall where they may after I sort this shit out, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to justlet her go.

But acting like a psycho right now isn’t going to help anything, so I need to pull my shit together.

I sweep my thumbs below her eyes. “I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t really know what to do right now, but we need to have a long talk about a lot of stuff. But right now’s not a good time. Not when you’re obviously in so much pain like this.”

Natalia’s hardened, defiant expression falters and then softens. She says nothing, but she tugs at the towel to wrap it tighter around her.

I step away from her to retrieve her satin robe from the closet and hold it out to her. “Put this on and go lie down. I’m going to get you some ice and shit to fix all this up.”

I leave the bedroom in a daze, robotically retrieving ice, pain killers, and other random shit that I think might be useful. I don’t even care that she might be pulling out the secret phone to talk to Xavier. Because tomorrow, she’s going to know that I know.

Back in the bedroom, Natalia is seated on her side of the bed wearing the robe and hunched over her lap. Her thick, shiny, ebony hair is falling in fat waves over one shoulder, and her hands are clasped over her face like she’s silently crying. Some part of me still feels like I could cry, too.

And I am really, reallyfucking stupid or something because the truth keeps slamming against my heart and inside my mind.

I love her.

I love her in a forever kind of way that makes my insides ache and throb at the idea of how much physical pain she’s in right now; at the idea ofanythinghurting her; at the idea that this situation is going to cause me to lose her; the idea thatthatis suddenly unacceptable.

When Papá finds out about this, he’s going to insist that she be dealt with. I already knew that. It was the plan up until the moment I saw those bruises.

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